The first weave was a weave of Air, with token flows from the other Spheres to grant his weaving the power of High Sorcery. It formed around his paw, a sudden bluish glow eclipsing the Magelight around him. And with a backhanded swipe of his paw, he unleashed it. A crescent of bluish magical power, a scythe of pure Air formed before him, racing away with the arc of his paw, moving faster than any human could run, moving so quickly that nobody had the time to duck. It expanded as it moved away from him, growing to fill the entire street by the time it reached the front gates of the Imperial Palace, at a level chest high to a man. It struck those majestic gates, and then it simply passed through.
Anything the weave struck was sliced apart with utter neatness and precision, a perfect cut that split apart anything it hit. Everyone standing between him and the gates, the men standing at the gate, they all died in the blink of an eye. Tarrin's weave slashed them apart at the chest, so quickly and neatly that the halves of their bodies remained, looking as if nothing had happened, until blood erupted from the perfect lines of the cut, which caused the upper halves to slide aside as the bodies lost their rigidity and sank to the ground. Two of those bodies did not fall, two of them did not get sliced apart, though the power of the weave knocked them to the ground as if it were a solid thing. The weave continued on after them, extending almost all the way to the majestic palace building itself, killing everything in its path, slashing apart statues, horses, anything it struck, mowing down everyone before him like a scythe mowed wheat.
By the time the weave dissipated, it was nearly three hundred spans wide, and its leading edge was just as lethally sharp as it had been when it left his paw. The two lone survivors looked back in horror.
Nearly two hundred of the Imperial guards and servants lay in pieces all over the lawn of the Palace.
Gathering his energy, focusing through the drain of using weaves of such magnitude, Tarrin created the second. It was not an attack, it was a Ward, a ward of almost pure Divine power. A Ward designed to disrupt any magic that attempted to pass through it, a Ward that was attached to him, not to the space around him, forming a moving barrier that would defeat the spells of those Wizards that Shiika had bragged about. Tarrin charged the Ward with almost everything inside him, giving it a duration that would make it effective until nearly sunset, granting it a potency that would allow it to turn aside even the most powerful enchantments the Wizards tried to use against him.
The glow of Magelight wavered around him, dimming so dramatically that it nearly winked out. But then it suddenly flared back to life, expanding around him as the power of the Weave sought to replace what he had expended, flooding back into him almost as quickly as he had used it. The wispy aura grew brighter and brighter, intensifying around him. Tarrin advanced several steps as the two survivors regained their feet, touching the rends in the fronts of their armor from his attack, then drawing their black-bladed swords. Cambions. Tarrin continued forward, reaching behind his right shoulder with his right paw and drawing the long Eastern weapon with a deliberate slowness, his expression one of utter ruthlessness. There was no pain now, no joy, no nothing. Only his towering fury, and the focus of necessity that laid before him. His braid danced in the power of Magelight, drifting and bobbing as if the tendrils of power were fingers picking it up from his back, and he stopped and raised his free paw towards the gates, which were now only twenty longspans before him.
A weave of solid Air formed before him, only Air, and he released it with a push of his paw. The air formed into a solid mass before him, a battering ram of intense power, that struck the slashed gates with tremendous force. The slashed gates, and the walls flanking it that were also cut by the first weave, shuddered under that impact, and the walls gave way. With the sound of breaking stone and the loud squealing of metal, the gates and the walls to which they were anchored gave way, and collapsed in a large cloud of dust.
The two Cambions coughed and choked on the heavy dust raised by the magical attack, giving ground to get out of the dusty air. Both looked up in fright as the cloudless sky began to broil, churn, as clouds formed from nothing and compressed, expanded, seethed above them, growing outward in a spiralling pattern. Brief pulses of lightning formed in the growing clouds, illuminating them as the ground began to darken with the hiding of the sun. Their attention was brought back down to earth as a shimmering white glow appeared inside the dusty cloud created by the collapse of the gates, growing more and more distinct.
And then it suddenly went out.
The Were-cat emerged from the cloud of dust moving at a steady, relentless pace, holding a very long, narrow, gently curved sword in one paw. He stopped suddenly, standing on a large rock, part of the debris from the wall, looking down at the two Cambions with eyes that promised their doom. He raised that black sword to the sky.
The two Cambions staggered back when a bolt of lightning ripped from the clouds above, striking the tip of that black metal sword, dancing around the Were-cat's body and strobing across the stones around him. A loud thunderclap boomed from the lightning strike. The Were-cat brought the sword down sharply, and to their horror, lightning spilled from the clouds like rain, striking, dancing, streaking through the sky, blasting holes into the grass, incinerating men where they stood, and arcing from golden dome to golden dome as the lightning attacked the Imperial Palace as if some hand were guiding it. The two Cambions protected their eyes from the blinding light of the lightning, shuffling backwards with swords raised, terrified at what they were seeing.
The Were-cat was somehow controlling the weather!
And then it ended. The carnage on the field was ghastly; the Were-cat had somehow directed the lighting to strike any living thing that moved on the grounds, and the smoking bodies of the dead littered the field around the Palace, many of which had just streamed from the Palace itself to answer the strange attack on the compound. The Were-cat seemed to sag afterwards, but the sword stopped falling towards the ground and held firm, then raised back up. He looked down at them scornfully, that expressionless mask showing emotion, the emotions of anger and hate. He took the long weapon in both paws and dropped down from the rock, standing there like an angel of death, and then he lunged to the attack, an attack so sudden, so fast, they barely comprehended that they were about to meet the God of Death in person.
And his face was Tarrin's.
He didn't have time to feel proud.
He had managed to weave together a storm, to take his power and use it to alter the weather itself, something that his instructors in the Tower had said was possible, but was among the most difficult things Sorcerers could accomplish. It was supposedly possible when powerful Sorcerers with affinity for Air and Water were linked into a circle of seven. But he had done it alone, formed a storm out of dry air, a storm that had granted him its power to strike at his enemies.
The funny thing was, he had no idea how he did it. He rarely understood half the things he did with his power. He really only knew three or four powerful weaves by heart, weaves he used over and over again in different ways. But this one, this one was brand new, and he thought he may be able to do it again. If it didn't kill him. It had gone beyond draining him. He had to literally directly channel the energy flowing into him into the stunningly complicated weave he created, for it required so much energy that not even he could hold enough to form it. He had no idea how he did that. It wasn't supposed to be possible. A Sorcerer couldn't move magic unless the potential was within his body, there to push at the magical energy where he was forming the weave. But he had done it.